"E'town Preparing For Annual Maple Sugar Festival"

March 15, 1962-The sap is running in the maple trees around Elizabethtown. Slab wood is piled around the wooden shed on the Essex County Historical Society grounds. The odor of smoke will mix with the sweet smell of boiling maple syrup.

But that's all prelude. The big days for Elizabethtown - and folks all the way from Slit Rock Falls to Poke-o-Moonshine and even beyond - will be April 28 and 29. That's when all that succulent syrup will go to waists. The syrup will be generously swirled over pancakes for the benefit of some 2,200 festive customers.

Filling out the program will be such events as a palomino horse show, square dancing, band music, and an art show. All of this will benefit the historical society. Its building, the Adirondack History Center Museum, will be open the two days. And its members will take care of the pancake making, the syrup serving and the arranging of other events.

It is a true community effort, starting with the collection of sap. There are many trees on the society's grounds and neighbors for 10 miles around let the society tap their trees into old-fashioned buckets. A truck takes the 100 gallon collecting tank around each day.

The Adirondack Record-Elizabethtown Post

Aurora Ramsay works in the Brewster Research Library at the Adirondack History Center Museum in Elizabethtown.

ADIRONDACK HISTORY CENTER MUSEUM
ESSEX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PO Box 428, 7590 Court Street
Elizabethtown, NY 12932
www.adkhistorycenter.org
Research Queries: research@adkhistorycenter.org
General Information: echs@adkhistorycenter.org